Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Take FREE online courses from the TOP 40 colleges in the US

Take FREE online courses from the TOP 40 colleges in the US:
Online education is ubiquitous, it seems, and has a lot to recommend it, such as the convenience of learning when and where you want, and the fact that there are so many free courses out there. However, many online schools seem like they suddenly came out of nowhere, as if created yesterday by a committee of MBA types. The good news is that most brick and mortar schools now have online programs, including most of the best universities in America, and many offer online courses that are 100% free to take.
This post will list the top 40 US universities and present you with the free-for-all online education resources that each college (and/or members of it’s faculty) has on offer. This article aims to be the most comprehensive list of online education resources for the top colleges in America.
Note: scroll down for the list of 40 universities, and for an explanation of types of free online resources included in this article.

And the best colleges (in terms of free online education resources) are …

This is my own ranking of colleges based on the extent and quality of free online education resources they offer (as opposed to the big list underneath, which lists all of the top 40 schools as per the US News & World report college rankings).

Stanford: unquestionably, the most active and the most involved in providing quality free online education resources. Stanford professors, moreover, seem to be everywhere, active in some of the best non-university affiliated free online education sites on the internet.

MIT: not so much second best as tied with Stanford, really. But if you had to rank them, MIT is a close second.

Honorable mentions: Carnegie Mellon, University of Michigan, Rice, and Princeton.Note on credits and degrees. although you can get a world class education for free if you (a) are willing, and (b) invest the time and energy; free online learning is different from being accredited or getting a degree. For that, you will have to go through an admissions process and (more importantly) pay tuition and fees in each and every case.
We found no free courses that can be taken for credit. None, sorry.Note on rankings:

Columbia University is the fifth oldest institution of higher learning in the US, and the oldest in New York. Columbia administers the Pulitzer prize and, according to Wikipedia, is “affiliated with more Nobel prize laureates” than any other college.

Actively involved in research projects with NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and others, while simultaneously keeping the student-to-faculty ratio an impressive 3:1.

Telecourse:featuring a real Caltech course broadcast live, free to take (but there are academic prerequisites). At the time of this writing the course is “Introductory Machine Learning”, although that may have changed to something else at the time you read this. Not for credit.

Stanford Center for Professional Development: offers mainly for-pay certificates, degrees, courses and seminars, but also offers some free lectures and webinars.

Udacity online courses: was founded by three Stanford professors, and offers courses on the cutting edge of technology, free to take by all. (Technically it is not affiliated to Stanford, so of course no course credit is given).

Stanford coursed on Alison: some excellent courses here; a good range of courses, including “iPhone App Development”, which I would love to take.

Although the University of Chicago is a leading center of scientific research, it is better known for advances in humanities, such as sociology, political science, and economics.
Not much in the way of online education resources, compared to some of the others.

U of Chicago at Fathom: a handful of online courses. Note that the Fathom site is no longer being developed and no new content added.

Founded by Benjamin Franklin, ‘Penn’ is a private institution in Philadelphia that offers Arts and Sciences, Nursing, Engineering, Applied Sciences degrees, and Business degrees through the Wharton School of Business.

The smallest school in the Ivy League, Dartmouth College is a private institution in Hanover, N.H. that comprises Liberal Arts, Medicine, Engineering, and Business colleges, and offers 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences.

Dartmouth at Academic Earth: while Dartmouth is listed at the Academic Earth website, there was not a single course available when we wrote this. Try the link, though; it may have changed since.

A private research university in Baltimore, Md. that offers a wide array of academic programs in the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences, and engineering. The National Science Foundation ranked it #1 in science, medical and engineering R&D spending for 31 consecutive weeks (from Wikipedia).

Named after George Washington, WUSTL is a private research university that offers programs in architecture, art, arts and sciences, business, engineering and law. According to Wikipedia, “more than 90% of incoming freshmen were ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes”.

A private university in Providence, R.I., with the distinction having been the first American institution of higher learning to accept students regardless of religious affiliation, Brown is an Ivy League college that offers undergraduates more than 70 concentration programs to choose from, and holds them responsible for designing their own academic study plan.
Not much in the way of FREE online resources, unfortunately.

A private research university in Ithaca, N.Y., which was co-educational and non-sectarian since its founding in 1865, and is consistently ranked among the world’s 20 best universities across many different rankings.

A private research university located in Houston, TX. Rice adopts a “need-blind” admissions policy whereby it will meet “the full demonstrated need of any accepted student who requires help paying tuition”. (from Wikipedia, USN&WR).

Connexions: open courseware at Rice, featuring educational materials that anyone can view or contribute to.

Openstax: a Rice initiative that aims to produce creative commons licensed, downloadable eTextbooks and resources on many topics, that would be free to download and use.

A private research university that operates in metropolitan Atlanta as Emory college and at a smaller campus 40 miles away as Oxford College. It offers about 70 majors in the arts, sciences, nursing, and business administration.

A public research university that overlooks the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, Calif. UC Berkeley has a long list of notable alumni, faculty, and staffs, and is one of the best institutions of higher learning in the world.

Webcast.berkeley: “is UC Berkeley’s central service for online video & audio for students and learners around the globe.” Find and view courses and lectures by topic.

A private research university in Pittsburgh, PA. It specializes in academic areas including engineering, business, computer science, and fine arts, and according to Wikipedia “consistently ranks among the top 25 universities in the United States”.

The University of California—Los Angeles is a public research university that, next to UC Berkeley above, is one of the ‘flagship’ institutions of the University of California system. It offers over 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines.

A public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia and established by Thomas Jefferson in 1819. “UVA is the only university in the United States to be designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO”, according to Wikipedia.

A private, coeducational university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, founded in 1834. The university was originally located in Wake Forest, NC, where it got it’s name, but it moved to Winston-Salem in 1956.

“Tufts University is a private institution that was founded in 1852. The school has 69.1 percent of its classes with fewer than 20 students, and the student-faculty ratio at Tufts University is 9:1”. Source: USN&WR.

Tufts Open Courseware: course materials provided freely online. Note that these do not necessarily include all of the resources used in actual Tufts courses, but only what the instructors have chosen (or were able to) include.

A private research university founded in 1948, with a liberal arts focus, a student to faculty ratio of 9:1, and a selective admissions policy.
Not too much in the way of free online education resources though.

A public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1865 during the reconstruction period in the wake of the America civil war, it has grown to become one of the best institutes of higher learning in the United States.

Thanks go to Alaa K. for doing considerable research for this article.
That’s it. If you know of any related free online education resources that I missed, please let me know in the comments section above.